Recent statistics show that as much as 93 percent of B2B companies use content marketing to establish their brand and create demand.
In actuality, B2B marketers that blog generate 67 percent more leads than marketers that don’t.
At the same time, content marketing is expected to be the most commercially important digital marketing trend, according to Smart Insights.
If you want your business to thrive and drive significantly more traffic to your website, you need to devise a new, updated content marketing strategy.
Here are five content marketing trends that you shouldn’t ignore if you want to be successful.
Table of Contents
1. Brands That Do Content Marketing Will Rank Higher in SERPs
Google is on an uncompromising mission: to offer users high-quality content that’s relevant and valuable.
By consistently producing good content, brands can deliver exactly the information that their target audience is interested in, and establish themselves as reliable product or service providers.
At the same time, good content can attract more backlinks and social media signals, which can both increase authority – a factor that will largely impact your website’s search engine ranking.
While taking note of other SEO elements such as keywords is still important, focusing on content is paramount, so brands that don’t currently have a content marketing strategy should certainly develop one.
Posting valuable content will help paint your brand in a positive light, thereby contributing to increased popularity for your business.
2. More Brands Will Learn About the Importance of Content Distribution
Most brands’ content marketing strategy is limited specifically to content creation and publication.
Effective distribution goes a long way towards helping brands put their content in front of their target audience.
In addition to letting brands reach their existing and prospect customers, content distribution gives them a competitive advantage over other companies trying to win their audience over.
But for this strategy to be efficient, brands should make sure their content is correctly optimized, mobile-friendly, and most importantly highly valuable for their readers.
If users access your content from mobile devices, and the page isn’t mobile-responsive, they will abandon it, no matter how good the information is.
Alternatively, if your content doesn’t bring any new information, or the information isn’t entirely accurate, there is a good chance that users will click the “back” button.
3. Content Marketing and Social Media Will Be Essential One to Another
Social media is one of the most powerful content distribution funnels, allowing brands to reach out to their target audience, drive more traffic and earn backlinks.
Due to the huge number of prospective customers spending more and more time on social networks, these platforms offer companies the opportunity to get their content read by more eyes.
As a result, paid social media advertising will become increasingly popular, and businesses will continue to spend massive budgets to promote their posts and get ahead of competitors.
4. Content Repurposing Will Become More Popular
According to a survey conducted by Content Marketing Institute in 2014, as much as 86 percent of marketers stated that one of their content marketing resolutions for the upcoming year would be finding ways to repurpose their content.
Brands will be seeking out the ability to create cost-effective, user-driven content in 2015, addressing not only multiple constituents in the buying ecosystem, but also multiple selling environments.
This helps minimize the resources needed to consistently create new and fresh content, allowing companies to leverage existing content that has had an impact on their audience in the past.
5. Guest Blogging Will Rise Again
After Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, has stated that guest blogging was “done,” it caused a mass exodus that led to writers moving away from this popular model.
Later on, Cutts came back and said he was misunderstood, and what he actually meant was that guest posting was “done” as a link building strategy – but this doesn’t make it less effective as part of brands’ content marketing efforts.
If done correctly, guest blogging can help you gain exposure, reach out to a wider audience, build a sense of community, and brand your business.
Guest blogging may help you get one or two backlinks, but its real value lies more in the ability to help brands establish themselves in the industry they operate in.
It’s no doubt that having the assistance of a digital search marketing agency can help you improve your content marketing efforts and stay in line with the biggest players of your industry.
Knowing what to focus on is critical to delivering good content and standing out in the sea of companies vying for attention.
But don’t forget that creation and publication are just the first steps of content marketing, and for the equation to be complete and correct, an adequate distribution plan is mandatory.
Anant Patel says
Hello Erik,
I agree with all your content marketing trends. Content marketing will be bigger than ever in 2015. Day by day digital marketing industry is became more competitive. Lots of content will be distrubuted everyday by all brands to attract their visitors. As we all know that Content is King and Content Marketing is Queen.
Thanks Erik for sharing informative post here.
Enjoy the Week 😉
Jonny says
Good stuff on content marketing. I promote every post I write. I hope to get more traffic someday.
Siva says
Hi Erik,
Well said, content marketing is that actually helps business grow, It makes more familiar with people to get know about their products and helps them to increase in growth. I would like to highlight my favourite ingredient is the GB :D. -> beileve Guest blogging is all about building relationships not links, also helps us to drive more traffic to your blogs/websites, gains authority as a guest blogger.
I don’t know, whether i would get chance to do Guest blogging in no passive income 😉 😀
Thanks
Siva
Adam says
Nice post, Erik.
Content marketing is really important to get traffic and more customers.
Sunday says
Well, Content marketing is still an invaluable strategy for successful online business. Going by the new trends shared here we have more to gain by ensuring that content marketing is well created, published, distributed and shared.
Website owners and bloggers that practice good content marketing strategies are still going to better off than those that ignored the trend.
Its time to re-strategize content delivery for effective promotion and value-addition!
I shared this comment in kingged.com where this post was upvoted as well.
Cindy Locher says
Thanks for a good article that points out a couple things I had not heard before, specifically the part about the Matt Cutts’ comment being misunderstood. I’m a writer and love to write and would continue guest blogging regardless of the impact on SEO or not. I believe that when your message is congruent and relevant, that getting it out across multiple outposts on the web will be beneficial, no matter what Big G decides to do with how they treat backlinks. I’m actually pleased with the direction things are headed–the days of just writing 200 words of garbage, spending money/time to create thousands of crappy backlinks, and basically “outmuscling” your competition in the SERPS is ending. Time for the folks who have value to contribute to be rewarded for their efforts. More of a meritocracy.
Umair Akram says
Hi Erik,
Thanks for this awesome blog post about the Content Marketing trends. I am personally using Guest Blogging to market my content over the blogosphere and will surely add these new things in my list. Guest Blogging is one of the most powerful ways to skyrocket your blog’s growth near to me.
As I will start using the other ways too. Again thanks for this awesome article. Couldn’t resist without sharing it on twitter. Happy a happy weekend ahead!
Umair Akram says
The pleasure is mine Erik! 🙂
Rajkumar says
Hi,
Perfect article, I’ve been focusing more on content marketing strategies these day and I guess this article is very helpful.
Thanks
Mark says
Hi,
Very useful, those who are trying to learn more about content marketing and doing the same marketing campaigns I’d say its a great resource for them.
Yasin Rishad says
Hi Erik,
Glad to see your content on content marketing trends. Content marketing strategy is a great way to engage with customers. The more positive marketing you will do for your content you will get much feedback from it.
I really enjoyed your advice on social media and content marketing will be essential to each other. Thank you for your great effort for writing this awesome content.
Kind Regards
Yasin Rishad
Lawrence Berry says
One of the things that I find particularly hard to do when it comes to content marketing is guest posting. Now, I totally agree that guest posting can help you and your brand gain exposure, but I find it extremely difficult giving up some of my best articles to other blogs. Every time I begin to write for another website, I say to myself “Man this is a good piece” and it become tempting to put the article on my own website. Certainly, the trends you have mentioned here though should not be ignored. Great post!